Thor's Helmet through Bushfires

[MarsG76]

Hi All,

This is my first time ever imaged Thor's Helmet Nebula, NGC 2359, located in the constellation Canis Major.

This image is not my finest so far but was a bit of a challenge with the Australian bushfires raging on for many months now and sending a lot of smoke into the atmosphere, blocking out a lot of the sky, crippling seeing and transparency and as a result causing me to throw out a lot of failed subs.

The subs I used for this image are a total of 35 hours 7 minutes and 30 seconds, these are a selection of the best subs for this image but I have spent a lot more time in tracking this nebula from 30 November 2019 until 4 January 2020.

This image was exposed through a Celestron 8" SCT at 2032mm focal length using a astro-modded and cooled Canon 40D DSLR.

This consists of HAlpha and OIII only, combined as HOO in RGB channels... I was going to capture SII also and create an SHO image but seeing the amount of time I spent on this object so far, I decided to stick with wht I have.. I might revisit this object next year and create a SHO image of NGC2359.

 

BTW the fires are not looking like they're about to go out but we have had a considerable amount of rain yesterday and today so hopefully soon enough the fires will go out...

 

Clear Skies,

MG

Edited January 8, 2020 by MarsG76

[carastro]

Well done Triumph against adversity.  Thinking of you guys,  a dreadful time for you all.

Carole 

[oldannie]

That's a very impressive Thor's Helmut and ditto about thinking of what many Australians are going through!

 

Annie

[Brian Maurer]

Great image considering the circumstances. I’ve imaged with smoke and it’s not very good.
 

I hope they get those fires under control. Breathing must be tough.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Great image and probably for the first time ever I am praying for more rain for you and bring some relief to you all.

Steve

[MarsG76]

Solid rain is not on the horizon again... it rained for a bit, and we thought that perhaps this will be a good down pour but it stopped and again it's hazy, foggy and dry....

These fires are getting out of hand, but even though Australia burns every year as a lot of the vegetation needs fires to spread, this year is particularly bad because of a group of dole bludging parasites protesting against back burning (something the Aboriginal people did to control the fires for thousands of years) because it, and I quote, "Will put too much CO2 into the atmosphere"... that action certainly saved CO2 getting into the atmosphere!!!... they are responsible for the loss of life and property that resulted.

The government should have never folded to a group of people who contribute nothing (and their actions are obviously disasterous), hopefully this will be a lesson learned and this will make those groups blocking roads a act of terrorism, vandalism or illegal by what ever title... and we will never see a repeat of this again...

There are a lot of angry people pointing fingers at those types...

Any way... the forcast shows 30% chance of rain on Saturday & Sunday.... we're here hoping that it's 100% and a down pour. 

Edited January 8, 2020 by MarsG76

[carastro]

Didn't realise it was due to what amounts as vandalism, I had been reading it was because of such a long period of drought.  Likely due to both.

Carole 

[MarsG76]

12 minutes ago, carastro said:

Didn't realise it was due to what amounts as vandalism, I had been reading it was because of such a long period of drought.  Likely due to both.

Carole 

Not completely... look up the stories that were very quickly taken down by the "ABC" regarding this, they need to save face... Ahh the media never lets the complete truth get in the way of a good (semi fictional) story that panders to the current fashion trend that they believe will sell. Take what you hear on MSM with a grain of salt.... 

yes, we are in a drought and it doesn't help, hence the back burning being necessary during winter.. after all this is Australia and the drought is cyclical, and we are one of, if not the, driest continent on the planet... in the next 5 years it'll be wet summers again... seen it happen over and over again...

 

Edited January 8, 2020 by MarsG76

[Brian Maurer]

It’s hard to believe anything anymore, I’ve heard anything from people started a bunch of the fires, lack of land management and of course Climate Change. 
 

Well I wish you well and hope they get it under control, it’s a terrible loss to all there.